I. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a nutritional supplement for treating and preventing excessive intestinal permeability in living systems. The composition of the present invention provides nutritional buffers to the gastrointestinal tract as well as buffered, optimal amounts of amino acid chelates, minerals, and vitamins. Furthermore, the composition optionally may include antioxidants, free radical scavengers, beneficial organisms to restore intestinal health, and tract-soothing herbs.
II. Description of the Relevant Art
In the past thirty years, there have been many environmental changes affecting agriculture and the foods eaten by both animals and humans. The most notorious three factors affecting nutritional status of our foods and feeds are toxic environmental chemicals, acid rain, and the commonly unrecognized impact of the new super phosphate fertilizers having the composition 0-0-46.
Toxic environmental chemicals fall into two general categories. The first category comprises organic compounds including pesticides, herbicides, solvents and other industrial chemicals. These organic compounds are known to affect hormone status in biological systems, mimicking both androgens and estrogens. Healthy biochemistry includes the suppression of, activation of, and competition with natural hormones in the biological system, whether the system is plant, animal or bacterial in nature.
The second category of toxic environmental chemicals comprise heavy metal and halogen compounds. Heavy metals are known to substitute themselves for nutritional metals or minerals in enzyme systems and other biochemical pathways that are dependent upon nutritional metals or minerals. This especially occurs under conditions of excessive exposure to the heavy metals combined with nutrient metal or mineral deficiency.
Halogen compounds (containing fluorine, chlorine, bromine, and/or iodine) are often organic as well, multiplying their potential for toxicity. The law of halogen replacement, which describes the chemical personalities of the halogens, states that the electro-negativity of the halogens decreases progressively with increase in atomic number. Each halogen tends to displace those below it in the Periodic Table. Fluorine is the most electronegative of all of the halogen elements, followed by chlorine, bromine and finally iodine. Iodine is necessary for the thyroid hormone thyroxine which plugs into special receptor sites on the cell membranes of every cell in an animal system, regulating the speed of biochemical reactions at the cellular level. Thus, thyroxine is the master regulator of basal metabolism. The molecule thyroxine is composed of two molecules of the amino acid tyrosine bonded to four molecules of iodine, commonly called T4. The T4 molecule, known as the storage form of the thyroid hormone, is then enzymatically deiodinated to T3 (whereupon it contains only three iodine molecules) to free a bonding site for the receptor on the cell membrane. This now becomes the active form of the thyroid hormone in the animal body.
Because the law of halogen replacement, iodine, which is essential in animal and human biochemistry, brings up the rear in halogen chemical activity. Iodine is the least active of this family and can be easily displaced and substituted for by any of the other halogens. With reference to the thyroxine molecule, many intermediary biochemical pathways can be shut down in thyroid metabolism, as enzymes, cofactors and feedback mechanisms become confused by the deception if such a substitution occurs. Medical testing and diagnosis of thyroid function and dysfunction are also confused by the similarity of electron clouds, and differences in size and molecular weight of the displaced substituted lighter halogens for iodine. False negatives and positives in medical testing are possible, as well as skewed autoantibody titres, from autoimmune responses directed at the improper molecule trying to mimic the natural one. The measurement of levels of T3 and T4, which is the typical thyroid profile used as a screening tool for hypothyroidism in every medical office, can also be affected. Statistically, a full 60-65% of testees falling into the so-called "normal" category are symptomatic for clinical hypothyroidism and/or myxedema associated with hypothyroidism. The potential for biochemical disaster involving this displacement substitution, coupled with the higher toxicity of the other halogens themselves, sets the stage for the epidemic syndromes seen today which are variously depicted as chronic fatigue syndrome, clinical depression, morbid obesity, attention deficit disorder (ADD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and addiction syndromes resulting from clinical depression. These syndromes are frequently characterized by many faulty blood sugar regulation and hormone imbalances which are conditions involving lowered basal metabolism and metabolic rates. These statistical observations are exemplified in universally lower basal temperatures, particularly noted in the human population. Hardly anyone regularly records a basal temperature of 98.6.degree. F. anymore. New "normals", reflecting these statistical observations are not associated with optimum health, and are more in the 96-97.degree. range. This halogen causative factor in particular is highlighted in this invention, because thyroxine function in the body is known to regulate the absorption and metabolism of calcium and magnesium, the biological system's major cation buffers.
Acid rain affects the pH of the soil and subsequently the plants grown on it, showing a drop toward more acidic levels. Acid rain is known to affect both macro and micro mineral status as bioavailability for plants in a negative way, by binding and making these essential elements unavailable for use. Plants have not responded to the new soil nutritional deficiencies because they are simple organisms, much less complicated than the animal organisms who rely on them for food. Plant essential nutrients are limited to nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, while the animals (including man) who depend on them for food require many additional elements such as copper, zinc, manganese, cobalt, selenium, vanadium, etc. Plants simply take these additional elements up only incidentally. These additional elements do not significantly increase crop yield, for, as previously mentioned, they are not absolutely essential to plant growth. Upon recognition of these deficiencies coming through our foods and feeds by the more nutritionally aware organic farming movement, a great effort was launched some 20 years ago to improve the elemental nutritional status of soils, and hopefully the resulting foods and feeds produced. This great effort proved to be a failure, in that the fertilization practices involving the additional trace minerals previously mentioned did not significantly increase crop yield, and, subsequently, did not offer a payback to the organic farmers who spent great quantities of money in this experiment. In light of this information it now becomes more important to supplement these vanishing elements in the food of the animals and man who depend upon these now increasingly more deficient foods for sustenance and health.
Super phosphate fertilizer, a relatively new invention of the fertilizer industry, was created in response to the oil embargo of the early 1970s which so crippled the American economy. Traditionally, farmers used 30-40 lbs. per acre of conventional phosphate fertilizer for optimum grain production. In answer to the great demands of agriculture during this embargo for oil-based phosphate fertilizers, much research was done to try to reduce our requirements for oil in this industry thus to reduce the kind of dependence on foreign oil we had developed. The fertilizer industry was one of the largest users of oil resources. With super phosphate fertilizer, the 30-40 lb. requirement per acre of traditional phosphate fertilizer can be reduced to 2 lbs. per acre, which is a highly significant savings. The reduction can be accomplished because of the increased biological activity of the new phosphate chemical forms over the old phosphates. This higher phosphorus activity places a greater pressure against calcium and magnesium activity, the phosphorus element's antagonists and natural balancing elements. Calcium and magnesium are also the living organisms' major buffering elements, involved both at the cellular level as well as in the digestive tract. Greater phosphate activity, relative to calcium and magnesium activity, translates to the farmer as accelerated maturation of the grain plant, earlier harvest times, and less plant residue on fields after harvest due to stunted plant green growth dependent on calcium and magnesium. These super phosphate residues are now coming through food and feed sources for our food animals and ourselves. It is no coincidence that human population statistics are now showing earlier menarche and earlier menopause in girls and women. Population statistics also confirm higher calcium and magnesium deficiency syndromes, such as osteoporosis, at an ever earlier age as well.
This reduction of calcium and magnesium bioavailability and biological activity as a result of the combined negative environmental and technological influences causes depressions in buffering activity at the cell level in the animal system, allowing the accumulation of higher levels of acidic byproducts of cell metabolism, such as lactic acid. In the digestive tract, this downward pH shift contributes to the formation of ulcers and malabsorption syndrome, from incompletely buffered and therefore unabsorbable nutritional digestive components. The downward pH shift in the digestive tract also shifts the microbiological environment toward a favorability of acid accommodating, acidophilic and fermentative organisms, instead of those most suitable to aid digestion. The desirable symbiotic organisms are responsible for the production of B-complex vitamins, certain essential amino acids, and other intermediary metabolites that aid the host body. The host body has evolved to rely on this source of essential nutrition. Loss of this essential source of nutrition presents significant nutritional deficiencies affecting the inherent quality of life.
The combined effect of the downward pH shift in the digestive tract, associated with various environmental changes described above, is the factor acting as the major contributor to excessive intestinal permeability described as "leaky gut syndrome", with the corresponding associated allergy, parasitic and immune depression syndromes well documented in human medicine.
Excessive intestinal permeability (or "leaky gut syndrome") is the inability of the biological system to properly buffer the chyme ingredients of the small intestine. The lowered pH then irritates the membranes of the digestive system causing fragility and breakage of cell membranes at the cellular level, and leakage of digestive contents outside the digestive tract. Cell membranes are only two molecules in thickness, composed of a high percentage of protein, whose peptide bonds linking the amino acids, are highly susceptible to subtle downward pH shifts. These lowered pHs cause proteins to deform and change shape. This deformation can be demonstrated by adding milk to orange juice and watching the curds of deformed milk proteins form, in response to the lowered pH of the mixture containing citric acid. If the curdled milk/orange juice mixture is then buffered with baking soda, or the like, raising the pH, the curdles disappear and the mixture creams, as the milk proteins regain their shape again. When the proteins of the cell membranes become deformed from overexposure to this lowered pH shift action, the micropores in the cell membranes, which allow for influx of nutrients and outward flow of cellular waste products, become deformed as well, and essentially close off. This triggers inflammatory response and cell death by starvation and waste intoxication.
The integrity of the cell membrane is also essential for the electrical and energy mechanisms of the cell, with the cation electrolytes, magnesium and potassium inside the cell, balancing the cation electrolytes, calcium and sodium in the fluid outside of the cell. This function is similar to a car battery with its two chemical cells divided by a metal plate. Electrical activity across this plate is the source of electrical/chemical energy in the battery. The cell membrane is akin to this medial plate, across which electrical/chemical activity between the cations takes place. This is a major source of energy for the cell. Destruction of the cell membrane, all or in part, allows calcium and sodium to rush into the interior of the cell, essentially shutting down this electrical/chemical activity. The same thing happens to a car battery when the plate between the two cells is removed and chemicals from both cells are allowed to combine. When the cell membrane is destroyed, the cell itself is effectively destroyed. If this happens to take place along the intestinal walls of the gastro-intestinal tract, commonly the first area of the body affected by excess environmental acidity, fracturing of the tissues of the intestinal walls occurs. This then opens the door, so to speak, for invasion of inner tissues and cavities of the body by digestive contents. Here is where the allergic reactions and migrations of opportunistic microbiological and/or parasitic organisms are born, overwhelming the immune system to virtual exhaustion. Combined with the previously-described induced nutritional deficiencies, immune depression commonly results. Carrier proteins of trace minerals from the digestive tract are also affected, contributing to nutritional mineral deficiencies.
Since virtually any protein can be affected anywhere in the body by these lowered pH changes, the biochemical activity of enzymes, hormones, biochemical receptor sites, feedback mechanisms, and neurotransmitters are also affected, since these are proteins. This complicates physical conditioning and performance, as well as promoting behavioral changes, including clinical depression, anxiety, learning disabilities, and hyperactivity syndrome, among others. In fact, the combined effects of all of these aforementioned causative factors are the root of the commonly diagnosed gigantic category of "environmental illness".